Wal-Mart Ends DRM Support

An anonymous reader writes "So, you thought you did well to support the fledgling music industry by purchasing your tracks legally from the Wal-Mart store? Well, forget about moving these tracks to a new PC! Since they started selling DRM-free tracks last year, there's no money to be made in maintaining the DRM support systems, and in fact, support is being shut down. Make sure you circumvent the restrictions by burning the tracks to an old-fashioned CD before Wal-mart 'will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com.' Support ends October 9th."

Comments

Re:DRM is dead

[Yvan256]

I only bumped into FairPlay two times.

The first is when I tried to move a DRM'ed AAC file to an old Win98SE laptop (so I simply went and got the same tune as an MP3 file from P2P, since I had already paid for the tune).

The second is when I tried to play a rented movie from another computer. Turns out, you can't watch the movie from another computer, it has to be on the one you rented the movie from (even if the other computer is in your list of 5 allowed computers). I could have moved the movie to my AppleTV or my iPod touch, but I needed to watch it on my laptop. It's annoying that rented movies don't have the same limitations as purchased ones.

And EA wonders...

[Sniper511]

...why we have a problem with their newest DRM model.

(Yes, I'm aware they claim they'll release a patch before they turn off the servers, but if they go bankrupt tomorrow and can't PAY anyone to develop said patch, then what?)

Re:And EA wonders...

[Nobody Real]

if they go bankrupt tomorrow and can't PAY anyone to develop said patch, then what? Just use the patch the pirates have been using since before the game was officially released.

Another one bites the dust

[fsterman]

Why isn't there a tracker page at Defective By Design for how many of these DRM services have died? Google's video, Yahoo's music service, MSN Music, MTV, MLB.tv, CSS, etc?

Re:DRM is dead

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While I agree that fairplay is likely to be around for a fair while yet, it isn't all that structurally different from the DRM used in this case. Subscription service WMDRM phones home frequently, so a shutdown of the activation servers will actively hose you within 30 days or so; but ordinary "purchased" WMDRM tracks are playable for the life of activated machines, as with fairplay. If fairplay activation servers went down, you'd be exactly as hosed as the people in TFA(which is to say, as soon as you need to activate a new device).

Re:HAHAHA tag?

[EastCoastSurfer]

Amazon's store, last time I checked, was US-only

You mean the internet exists outside the US? :p

But the point is a backup would have been useless

[SuperKendall]

Nonetheless, it's always a good idea to backup your favorite music, regardless of the format in which it was purchased.

No it's not.

Not in this case.

For you see, when he went to re-load the backed up music it would re-contact the Walmart DRM server looking for authorization... A server which no longer exists.